Worker Advocate Launches Legal Task Force to Protect Indiana Right to Work Freedom

Law prevents union officials from extracting union dues from workers as a condition of employment

Washington, DC (February 2, 2012) – The National Right to Work Foundation announced today that it is launching a legal task force aimed at protecting Indiana’s newly-enacted Right to Work law.

Union officials publicly floated the idea of challenging the law in Indiana's courts before the law was even passed by the Indiana state senate.

Indiana is the nation's 23rd Right to Work state after the state senate passed the bill and Governor Mitch Daniels signed the bill into law on Wednesday.

Foundation attorneys have successfully defended state Right to Work laws in the past, including Oklahoma's. The task force has already examined reported union lines of attack and determined that Indiana’s Right to Work law is on sound legal ground.

"Union bosses want to undo what thousands of Hoosier citizens have worked hard for over the past decade," said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. "Because union partisans cannot win the hearts and minds of Indiana's workers and voters, they seek to have the courts strike down Indiana’s popular Right to Work law for them."

Read the entire press release here.

Right to Work Foundation Announces New Addition to Legal Team

Regent-trained attorney dedicated to the cause of individual liberty for America's workers

Washington, DC (January 30, 2012) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has hired Sarah Hartsfield of Austin, Texas, as an addition to its legal staff.

Hartsfield is a recently sworn in member of the Virginia State Bar and 2011 graduate of the Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

"Sarah brings to the Foundation a real commitment to defending and advancing individual liberty against the injustices of compulsory unionism," said Ray LaJeunesse, vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Foundation.

Read the entire release here.

Bank Employee Wins Settlement After AFSCME Union Bosses Illegally Seized Forced Dues for Politics

Wisconsin needs Right to Work law to protect workers from forced unionism abuses

Milwaukee, WI (May 31, 2011) – A U.S. Bank customer service and support employee reached a settlement with local union officials last week after union officials illegally attempted to force him and his colleagues into full-dues-paying union membership.

Peter Quinones of Milwaukee filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 777 union officials in March with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation.

After AFSCME Local 777 union bosses were granted monopoly bargaining privileges over approximately 300 U.S. Bank employees, Quinones sent a letter to union officials stating that he was exercising his right under National Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent in Communication Workers v. Beck to refrain from full-dues-paying union membership.

Read the entire release here.

Union Member Seeks to Block Obama Labor Department’s Efforts to Roll Back Union Disclosure Rules

Department guts disclosure rule that has exposed numerous corrupt union boss schemes, let rank-and-file members know how dues are spent

Washington, DC (May 23, 2011) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Maryland county government employee is asking a federal court to stop the Obama Administration from allowing union bosses to conceal lavish and corrupt union expenditures from workers.

Chris Mosquera, a member of a Municipal County Government Employee Local of the United Food and Commercial Worker (UFCW) union, filed the lawsuit against Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for rescinding a union boss disclosure rule which would make it less difficult for workers to hold union officials accountable.

Unions covered by the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) with total annual receipts of $250,000 or more are currently required to submit annual financial statements to the U.S. Department of Labor. LM-2 forms are the public disclosure documents for these larger unions and are available online on the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) website.

These forms have helped workers and citizen activists expose many unscrupulous union boss schemes, including lavish benefits to high-ranking union officials and loyalists, superfluous spending on union boss transportation (including private jets), and shady political spending (such as the Service Employees International Union bosses’ links to the disgraced political organization ACORN).

Read the entire release here.

State Employee Commission Rubber Stamps Union Boss Retaliation Against Employee Who Won Case against Union

Case highlights need to roll back union boss powers in the Garden State

Trenton, NJ (May 10, 2011) – Despite his previous legal successes, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) employee is learning firsthand how difficult it is to obtain justice in the face of union retaliation.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, DEP employee Gary Lipsius filed charges against the DEP for reversing a promotion and pay raise allegedly in retaliation for his previous filing of a successful lawsuit against Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1034 union bosses and the agency.

Lipsius successfully challenged the illegal deduction of compulsory dues from the paychecks of thousands of nonunion New Jersey employees in a 2004 class-action lawsuit against the CWA union. With free legal aid from the Foundation, Lipsius and two of his colleagues charged the CWA union with collecting compulsory dues for non-chargeable activities, such as politics, without properly disclosing the union’s expenditures. The suit forced CWA union officials to cease and desist their illegal actions.

Lipsius’ unfair labor practice charges against the DEP – which prompted the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) to investigate and conduct a trial – sought back pay and a reinstatement of his raise and promotion.

Read the entire release here.

Army Wives Driver Wins over $55k in Lost Wages After Teamster Union Boss Blacklisting

Teamster union bosses’ ugly retaliation prevents employee from making a living

Washington, DC (March 17, 2011) – An ABC Studios movie/television driver has won over $55,000 in lost income after Teamster union officials refused to allow him to do his job for nearly a year.

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys helped the driver win the case before a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge in Charleston, South Carolina.

Teamster Local 509 union officials currently enjoy exclusive bargaining privileges with ABC Studios in Charleston – and thus have a monopoly bargaining agreement with ABC that forces workers to go through Teamster Local 509’s hiring hall in order to obtain a job.

However, because Local 509 union members were working on other television and movie productions, Thomas Coghill – who was from Wilmington, North Carolina and a member of Teamster Local 391 – worked on the set of the Charleston-based Army Wives television series. Coghill worked during the show’s first two seasons beginning in 2008 as a makeup truck driver.

However, as more Local 509 union members became available to work on the production of Army Wives, a dispute over who should be eligible to work on the set of Army Wives erupted between various Teamster union officials and Coghill was removed from Local 509’s “Movie Referral List” because he was not a member of Local 509. Meanwhile, Local 509 union members continue to receive preferential treatment in job placement on the set of Army Wives.

Read the entire release here.

Today, the Denver Post questioned President Obama's recess appointment of radical SEIU union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, noting how Becker's biases against workers' rights:

From the Denver Post:

We question Becker's ability to be an arbiter enforcing fairness in union elections...Becker served as counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO. It was [SEIU] president Andy Stern who visited the Obama White House 38 times (at last count), and his union spent a reported $66 million to help the president win election.

The Post continues:

He not only supports so-called "card check," the Employee Free Choice Act that which would effectively eliminate secret ballots and strip away worker privacy when forming a union, he also advocates for the elimination of the "no union" option from workers' ballots. And he thinks employers should have no "role in union organizing campaigns and in union representation elections."

How can Americans expect Becker will exhibit impartiality?

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, for instance, already has asked Becker to recuse himself from 12 cases because "his prior writings demonstrate a bias against the group."

Read the whole Denver Post editorial here.

The March/April 2010 issue of Foundation Action is now available for download as a PDF. This is the Foundation's official bimonthly publication that provides an excellent overview of hard-hitting legal actions being taken by Foundation attorneys every day to combat forced unionism. This issue's top story chronicles the Foundation's efforts to help Michigan's home-based child-care providers fight back against Governor Jennifer Granholm's corrupt government union political payback scheme.

Also in this issue: 

• Federal Lawsuit Challenges Michigan Scheme to Impose Union on Child-Care Providers
• Union Boss Privacy Victims Case Taken to Supreme Court
• Make a Difference in the Fight Against Compulsory Unionism
• Foundation Unearths Ethical Lapses in Obama Administration
• CWA Bosses Attempt to Rig Employee Vote to Throw Union Out

In addition to to reading Foundation Action online, you can sign up to receive a free subscription by mail here.

Union bosses want to their unions to be akin to roach motels:  Easy to check in, but impossible to check out.

On Monday, National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Raymond LaJeunesse presented the perspective of independent-minded workers at the National Mediation Board's (NMB) hearing on proposed changes to labor regulations under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) that would enable union organizers to corral tens of thousands of non-union railway and airline industry workers into union membership.

Unfortunately, the NMB -- the government agency charged under the RLA with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries -- voted 2-1 to consider dramatic changes concocted by the bosses of the AFL-CIO union and 30 other unions. The changes would dictate a new system in which just a majority of workers affirmatively voting in a union organizing election to impose unionization on the whole collective bargaining unit.  The current system requires union organizers to obtain the consent of a true majority of workers in a given bargaining unit to accept their "exclusive representation."

The Foundation's vice president and legal director argued before the NMB that the proposed changes further stack the deck against independent-minded workers who must compete against Big Labor’s well-funded, professional organizing machine -- operating across entire, often-nationwide bargaining units -- to secure their right to be free from union boss "representation." The proposed scheme imposes a greater burden on employees who wish to refrain from union membership by forcing them to either take affirmative action to protect rights that should already be secure -- or otherwise allow far less than a majority of their colleagues take away their independence.

Furthermore, Foundation attorneys also argued that the NMB needs establish a formal process under the RLA for workers wanting to remove a union as their monopoly bargaining agent as required under Foundation-won precedent in U.S. federal court.

To read the Foundation's statement, click here.

UPDATE: On December 29, Foundation attorneys filed formal comments to the NMB. In them, the Foundation argued key four points:

• The NMB lacks the authority to make the proposed changes, only Congress does.
• The NMB's application of the definition of what makes a monopoly bargaining unit makes it virtually impossible for independent-minded employees combat professional union organizers.
• Workers who have no interest in union membership are forced to take action to oppose the union bosses' "representation."
• It is extremely difficult for employees to remove a union, especially so because the NMB has not established a procedure to allow workers to terminate a union hierarchy's monopoly bargaining privileges.

For these reasons, Foundation attorneys argue that the NMB should reject the proposed changes just as they did as recently as 2008.  To read the formal comments, click here.

Michigan Worker Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Halt UAW Policy of Religious Discrimination

Right to Work attorneys challenge union officials’ violation of worker’s civil rights

Washington, DC (December 15, 2009) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a western Michigan auto worker is asking the U.S. Supreme Court today to review a United Auto Workers (UAW) union policy intended to stymie workers’ religious objections to the union bosses’ agenda.

Jeffrey Reed, a resident of Bridgman, Michigan, assembles vehicles for AM General. Because his workplace is unionized, he works under a monopoly bargaining agreement which forces him either to join the UAW or pay compulsory union fees to it in order to keep his job. However, Reed, a devout Catholic, believes financially supporting the UAW union violates his sincerely-held religious beliefs due to the union hierarchy’s support for special rights for homosexuals and abortion-on-demand.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, union officials may not force any employee to financially support a union if doing so violates the worker’s sincerely-held religious beliefs. The statute requires union officials to attempt to accommodate the worker – most often by redirecting the mandatory union fees to a mutually agreed upon charity – to avoid the conflict between an employee’s faith and a requirement to pay fees to a union he or she believes to be immoral.

However, because Reed is refraining from full dues paying union membership based on his faith, UAW union bosses forced him to pay a $100 premium and continue to pay 22 percent more than the amount workers who object on non-religious grounds must pay. Both full UAW members and secular objectors are allowed to pay an amount less than full dues if they wish to cut off the use of their union dues for political activities.

(Read the full press release)